Hi, My Name Is...

Humans love to complain. I don't know why it is that we can't wait to tell people about how bad an experience was, but when I was working in customer service a manager told me about '2-7' rule, which says that if someone has a perfectly nice time and everything runs smoothly, they will tell a maximum of 2 people. But, if even the smallest detail of their night goes badly they will tell at least 7 people about the hell they were put through. I can only assume this comes from people's primal urge to get sympathy. For the most part I avoid this in my life by staying away from people who whine about everything and try to focus on the positives. However, the internet makes that harder than it should be. As I'm sure most of you know, it is far too easy to fall down a rabbit hole of links and before you know it you are reading someone's website dedicated to recounting their horrible customer service experience, which I'm sure is factual and completely accurate to how the events occurred. Again, 99% of the time I just click off the website and go about my day. But the other day I came across a website which so annoyed me I couldn't help but keep hate-clicking my way through a website which was dedicated to the people at Starbucks spelling people's names wrong names on their orders.

Before the site even finished loading I had decided the premise of this website annoyed me. If you have read this blog before you know that I don't like it when customers complain about the people who make their food. Also, I am not a fan of consumers who complain about corporate procedures to the guys working behind the counter. This is probably not how they saw their life going and don't want to listen to you whine about spelling. On top of that, they can't do anything about your complaints (if they had that kind of power do you think they would be waiting on you?), so you would be better off saving that annoyance until you got home and started composing an email so someone who actually gave a crap. But, despite knowing I was probably going to hate this site the more I read, for some reason I felt myself scrolling down to look at more entries. Sure, the first couple of pictures were amusing such as people named "Mike" whose coffee came back with the name "Steve" on it. I don't care how much someone mumbles, that is quite the mess up. Oh, wacky internet, you gave me a chuckle. But then I started to encounter people who clearly didn't get what this website was intended to be, such as the guy who was pissed that his cup said "Dave" even though he clearly told them "David" or the woman who couldn't believe they didn't know she was Allison with two L's, not one. But the one which really sent me over the edge was the woman who was unhappy because the barista has misspelled her name as "Caleen" when her name was actually spelled "Kalleen". I don't even like Starbucks and I am on their side in this one.

Someone misspelling a name which didn't exist until 10 minutes before you were born is not the fault of the person taking your order - that is the fault of your terrible parents who decided to stick you with a name that isn't even a real word. In my mind she has no more right to complain than any of the people who have taken traditional names and given them odd spellings, such as the parents who decided what the name Britney was really missing was missing a couple extra vowels and turned it into Brittannie. This is what happens when parents give their children unique names - the children live with the consequences and often that consequence is they snap about having to spell their name for every person they talk to. I'm sure Kalleen has been dealing with the problem her whole life, but it hardly seems fair to attempt to publicly shame the person making your coffee. Also, take it from someone who has his last name misspelled all the time - no one cares. Most of the time I assume it is my own fault because I have terrible handwriting, so I don't even correct people. Unless the mistake is on an official form which prevents you from getting paid, leaving a foreign country, adopting a child or getting married it is one of the least-important things which is going to happen to you on a day-to-day basis. Compliment them on getting closer than most people and move on with your day.

To go back to my original point, this website just felt like a shrine to complaining for the sake of complaining. Seriously, as long as the order inside the cup is correct, who cares what the name on the outside says? I'm sure there are famous people who get their names misspelled all the time (you think anyone is confident when they write out the name Idris Elba?) and if those people don't have a chance, than a computer programmer from Portland doesn't have a chance in hell. Also, I have news for you: the people behind the counter don't want to be your friend - they want to serve you quickly so you will leave a tip and then get out of the way to they can move on to the next person who may leave them a bigger tip. You're not the most important part of their day so stop acting like the presses should stop when you walk in the door. The whole blog felt like it was created by the most self-important people on the world wide web, which is kind of impressive because most things on the web today are self-important. I can only hope that like other sites which are nothing more than pictures without any content the site goes away as quickly as it appears. Because any way you want to spell it, the entire site just made me annoyed.